Devil's advocate in Slate comments

[Paul Mackin]

On Jul 20, 2006, at 4:41 PM, Ya Sam wrote:

>
>
> Subject: Pynchon is a bad writer
> From: thetwomacduff
> Date: Jul 20 2006 3:52PM
>
> Many of the replies to danielmartinx have missed his main point,  
> which was not that the university crowd have abandoned him, but  
> that he is, technically, not a very good writer; that his prose is  
> clotted and poorly constructed, and that the praise he has received  
> has been for the supposed "ideas" content, not for the style, which  
> is often excused, but seldom praised.
>
> Of course, every now and then, he pulls off a beautiful passage,  
> viz., the opening of Gravity's Rainbow, but he isn't able to  
> consistently write readable prose, or even construct moderately  
> well-crafted sentences.
>
> The stuff of Pynchon's Books is, mostly, science fiction, but his  
> technique is to swathe that stuff in a style that is self- 
> consciously post-modern, and, as he has gone on and on, it is the  
> style that has brought him his fans – and yes, I would agree, he  
> has many, and that many are members or hangers-on of the  
> "university crowd." But he's an appallingly slipshod writer, and,  
> in my opinion, not a very clear thinker.
>
> If you want to read the book that Gravity's Rainbow aspired to be,  
> read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, for it has many of the same  
> concerns, it covers the same period and theatre of operations, and  
> it is a much better crafted book.
>
>



Comparison between Pynchon and Stephenson is surely to the  point,  
notwithstanding the fact that everything has been comically turned  
backward. The piece succeeds in grabbing our attention. Put front  
forward rather than ass backward the points made would have been  
banally self-evident and we would be inclined to think some utter  
dweeb had written it. Thus the  style perfectly suits the content.   
Only one quibble: Pynchon doesn't pretend to be a thinker. Stephenson  
has to pretend to be a thinker because he clearly is  not a writer-- 
overblown, sloppy to a perfection, no feeling whatever for time  and  
place.

Otherwise my hat off to all concerned.
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